EXISTENTIALISM, EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY, AND EXISTENZ-PHILOSOPHY

There can be no doubt that Nietzsche figured importantly in the genealogy of existentialism. Along with Kierkegaard, he is commonly considered to have been one of its fathers – or perhaps grandfathers, if its paternity is to be attributed to Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers. An argument can certainly be made that Kierkegaard deserves the characterization “existentialist,” his passionate Christianity notwithstanding; for he virtually defined the program of the movement with his famous criticism of “modern philosophy” (that is, Hegel) for “having forgotten, in a sort of world-historical absent-mindedness, what it means to be a human being … each one for himself,” his insistence that “If [one] is a human being then he is also an existing individual,” and his contention that a human being does best to “concentrate his entire energy upon the fact that he isan existing individual.” But is the reinterpretation of human reality that Nietzsche calls for, and undertakes, to be understood at all similarly?